STUART McGINLEY: Our ‘new’ MPs need to talk to local people

So finally another general election campaign is over and as a broadcaster it was a very exciting time to be on air as the results locally and nationally were coming in.

Then of course we had all those resignations for Mr Clegg, Farage and finally Ed Miliband. Suddenly after all the speeches and bravado, it then feels very human when you see tired politicians losing their jobs staring at the floor and wondering what they are going to do next.

Now the election is over, I do want to encourage all local MP’s to maintain a regular relationship with local media, be it this paper or the station I work for as I have personal experience of how much readers and listeners appreciate this.

When I worked at another radio station in Berkshire during the previous election, Newbury’s MP Richard Benyon (who won his seat again last week) used to come in to the studios every week, or at least talk on the phone.

He would update his constituents every week with news of how he was getting on with various local campaigns, and to give an insight into life in the commons, how much do we all really know about this?

This was received very positively by our audience, even those who didn’t vote for him appreciated that regular contact.

It’s worth noting that he was a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the time, so a very busy man but he still had time to see us!

One thing that made me chuckle last week was despite all the excitement about the election, nothing could compete with our Naked Gardener competition on the Spirit FM Facebook page, this had FOUR times the engagement of any other post we made last week!

I was touched that our winner Dan Julian from Chichester (the man with the big saw!) donated some of his prize to planetscharity.org, they’ve been supporting his mum after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer two years ago.

Dan’s also received personal donations for the charity since being on my radio show last week which is fantastic, a lovely way of raising money for a great cause and having some fun at the same time, well done Dan!

:: Listen to McGinley in the Morning with Stuart McGinley each weekday from 6am on Spirit FM